Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Let's Play Grandia!

Grandia? What's that?
Originally released in 1997 on the Sega Saturn, it received a Playstation port in 1999, which was later translated and released in the US and Europe that same year.

Since 2010, it has been available on the PSN, so if you're looking to follow along, that's always an option.

The closest analogue is probably Xenogears: both feature a large, developed cast of characters, amazing music, 2D sprites in a 3D world, and a second disk that lacks the same effort and attention as the first.

They are both also horribly, horribly anime.

That said, Grandia at its worst is still pretty damn good, and the detail and charm are well worth showing off.

What sort of LP is this, anyway?

Primarily screenshots, with videos of FMVs, boss fights, long cutscenes, and other things that deserve to be seen in motion but are too big to gif.

Of course, there will be screenshot-only summaries of the videos, for those who choose not to watch.

Screenshots? Oh great, you're going to be forcing your "witty" fanfiction dialog on us, aren't you?

That... is one way of putting it.

In all seriousness, for the most part the game's dialog stands just fine on its own. On the occasions where I feel the need to add to it, the addition will be set up in italics or, if it would ~~annoy more~~ flow better, strikethrough.

Something that will come up more frequently, though, is when there are multiple dialog options. Such choices will be done in bold.

And what's with all those Tindeck links? Can't you just link the soundtrack on Youtube?

There's actually two reasons that's not a good idea. First is that a lot of the music straight-up isn't on the OST. Secondly, the OST tends to have multiple in-game songs per track, making it tricky to show the actual music used in whatever scene. (All right, skip to 2:45, then at 3:15, skip to 3:45, and loop back at 4:30)

And this is the part where you tell us not to talk about things we haven't already seen, right?

Not quite. Though if you want to pretend that's the rule, I won't complain.

Instead of trying to get goons to stay on topic and not discuss spoilers, though, I'm just going to request that you try to keep them relevant to the update/discussion and tag things we haven't seen yet.

And if your post has more text spoiler-tagged than not, maybe now's not the best time to post it?

And just what should I expect out of these updates?

For the beginning, a normal update, showing off the plot or dungeon or whatever, followed by a bunch of NPC chatter.

NPC chatter updates, huh? Probably just an excuse to update half as often.

Nope! They're presented strictly as extras. Extras that really show off the game at its best, and are really recommended to read through, but technically extras.

This game is piss-easy, right? Are you gonna be using some crazy ROM hack to show off your skill?

While there is a "rebalancing" mod for this game (found here for the morbidly curious), I won't be using it. Mainly because it's not yet finished.

Instead, the difficulty in this challenge will come in the form of keeping the main character in extremely weak armor, as well as not using the free full recovery present at each and every save point.

What? Playing it unhacked? Are you gonna let us vote on how to fuck you over, then?

That's the idea. Before each dungeon I'll have a vote for which weapons to use (and if you haven't played this game, there's more to that than it appears). In addition, whenever magic becomes available, there'll be a vote to see who learns it, and what they learn. Should do to keep things interesting.

All right, already! Where can I start reading so I know just how much to mock you?

Glad you asked!

Disc 1